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Masahat Screens
September 24, 2023, 2:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Masahat Screens
Join us on the last day of Masahat festival for a thought-provoking and inspiring Sunday at VEGA Scene with film screenings, conversations, mingling and more.
The day starts with the screening of Bloody Beans (2013, 80 mins) directed by Narimane Mari, which won the top prize at the prestigious documentary festival CPH:DOX. In her hybrid documentary, Mari experiments with how children can appropriate a complex history while they try to reenact the colonization and the Algerian War of Independence.
Later in the day, we will have Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director of IDFA, as our main guest at Masahat Screens. Under the title “Decolonize the Gaze”, Nyrabia will talk about his vision and work at IDFA since he became the Artistic Director in 2018, then he will be joined by Anne Szefer Karlse to continue the conversation and discuss how major festivals and cultural institutions can address the questions of representation, equity and inclusion.
We then end the day with a short films program curated and introduced by Maha Maamoun.
Program
- PART I: Bloody Beans. Buy tickets HERE.
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- 14:30-16:00: Bloody Beans (2013, 80 mins) dir. Narimane Mari
- PART II: Conversation + short films. Buy tickets HERE.
- 16:00-17:15: Decolonize the Gaze with Orwa Nyrabia in conversation with Anne Szefer Karlsen
- 17:15-18:00: Mingling + finger food with Orwa Nyrabia and Masahat Screens guests
- 18:00-19:00: Litanies against fear (55 mins), a short films program curated and introduced by Maha Maamoun
(Loubia Hamra) Narimane Mari I France, Algeria | 2013 | 77 min
Language: Arabic
Subtitles: English
Already an established producer before she turned to directing, Narimane Mari is part of an exciting wave of experimental cinema coming from Algeria. Her debut feature, Bloody Beans, won the top prize at the prestigious documentary festival CPH:DOX, though to call it merely a “documentary” is reductive: described in Film Comment as an “expressionistic hybrid,” Mari’s film is a comedy, a tragedy about the past, and a portrait of colonialism in the present. Shot over nine days, with limited rehearsals and almost no reshoots, Mari’s film is set at some unspecified point during Algeria’s War of Independence, and explores the legacy of France’s brutal 132-year occupation of the country through the eyes and energies of children from the Bab El Oued and Bologhine neighborhoods of Algiers. The results are less “kids say the darndest things” than something akin to an hallucinatory experience, the surreal atmosphere aided by a score from Zombie Zombie.
A short films program curated by Maha Maamoun.
An anxiety runs deep in these films. It animates the bodies of the protagonists circumambulating their phantom homes and this film program. Contemporary experiences of separation from home-be they physical or psychological experiences, find their roots and resonances in narratives of forced displacement, colonialism and rising fascisms old and new.
- Only When All the Poison Has Gone (The Healing of Emily Ruete) (2023, 18 min) dir. Doa Aly
Only when all the poison has gone (The healing of Emily Ruete) is an audio-video installation based on the memoirs and letters of Emily Ruete, born Salamah bint Said bin Sultan, Princess of Oman and Zanzibar (1844-1924), as introduced by E. Van Donzel in An Arabian Princess Between Two Worlds: Memoirs, Letters Home, Sequels to the Memoirs, Syrian Customs and Usages. Emily/Salamah was prevented from returning to her homeland after eloping with a German merchant. This film seeks to turn the unconscious processes in Emily’s writing into a conscious awareness of movement, through choreography, to create an immersive field of healing feminine energy, a meditation, using her character as an effigy in a cathartic experience, for and by her.
- 30KG Shine (2017, 20 mins) dir. Shadi Habib Allah
30KG Shine (2017) is a video installation that examines various states of existence-object, body and spirit – and how they exchange roles and share enmeshed forms of agency. Paying homage to a 1930s urban myth about a ghost that haunted the Old City of Jerusalem, the film records how an elderly woman, currently living where the fable is set, secures her home and family heritage by leading life in confined quarters, often at the expense of her own livelihood and health. The work also features footage of a ‘tunnel cemetery’ being constructed to house 22,000 displaced corpses; these bodies claim presence and ownership of the place where they will lie.
- Capital (2023, 17 mins) dir. Basma al-Sherif
Referencing the Italian “white telephone” films of the late 1930s and 40s, that were considered as precursors to fascist propaganda films, al-Sherif’s latest film reflects on the grotesque via a purview of contemporary urban planning projects and their promise of comfort and docility.
